Interaction Of Recruitment Process Outsourcing And Corporate Brand - Pros And Cons Essay.

To discuss the interaction between succession planning and retention we will ask and answer three questions.  First, why is succession planning of critical importance Second, what are the pros and cons of informing employees that they are candidates as part of the organization’s succession planning process  Lastly, what problems are demographic shifts causing for succession planning.

“Succession planning involves identifying key management positions that the organization cannot afford to have vacant.  These are usually senior management positions and/or positions that the organization has traditionally had a very difficult time filling” (Mello, 2015, p. 207).   For an organization to remain competitive in their specific market, their plan needs to be strategy driven based on organizational goals for the near future.  This process is not static and needs monitoring and modification if necessary to meet goals.  Human Resource (HR) functions must be involved in the process as well, since they are responsible for the hiring, training and development of employees.  Centrally managing succession planning to assure coordination of efforts is necessary.  Mangers at all levels in the organization need to be involved and engaged in the process.

Succession planning is changing with the changing focus of business today.  In the past, succession planning was only for the senior leadership.  However, organizations today realize that the critical positions are all up and down the organizational chart.  Today organizations need to keep and motivate the best and brightest.  HR planners need to institute programs that focus on the human capital in the organization.

Succession Planning: Importance and Evolution

Today, the concept of predictive analysis and metrics has moved out from the pure tech functions into mainstream circles as well. Global companies are taking advantage of this which was a stronghold of only few and now even applying to the functions like HR. HR department is one of the most important in the organization with vital functions from recruitment to performance mapping till outplacement. The stronghold of analytics has been making a great difference to one of the major functions of HR i.e. talent acquisition by bringing the feature of ‘predictable as well as quantitative outcomes’ for the human capabilities.

Today HR predictive analytics startups are getting about USD 45 million contracts from one investor itself. The concept is making a great leap. The report considers Recruitment Process Outsourcing as the major transformation in the field of HR and how it affects the corporate image. This concept is unique and is increasingly using HR predictive analytics which is making the process faster and quantifiable.

Recruitment process outsourcing stands for giving out the function of recruitment to another company partially or fully. In order to discuss as well as analyze the interaction of outsourcing the recruiting process and the corporate brand, three questions have been considered and answered (Gilani and Jamshed, 2016 P-316). The first part is about the concept of outsourcing of recruiting process and the way it is done. The second question is regarding the pros and cons of using outsourcing companies for recruitment process and its effects on an organization. The last question is about the relationship between the corporate brand and RPO (Landay and DeArmond, 2018, P-88).

RPO and Corporate Brand:

In this greatly competitive and globalized world, there are various corporate companies or organizations which transfer or outsource their entire process of recruitment or just few parts of it to various external companies that provide the service of recruitment commonly known as Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) (Claus Wehner, Giardini and Kabst, 2014, P-868). According to Kabst (2014), the growing trend and demand of difficulty in finding perfect set of skills as well as overall crisis of talent has strongly favoured the industry of RPO (Al-Kassem, 2017, P-48).

 Efficient RPO helps in handling the entire need of employment, implements a result that regularly monitors as well as measures the results. It focuses on developing a strong as well as long lasting relationship. The traditional process of RPO starts by creating a requisition, meeting with an organization’s manager to understand the requirement and create a required listing of job (Gilani and Jamshed, 2016 P-316). After this, a strategy of recruiting is generated by posting the job, sourcing as well as process of resume screening begins.

Lastly, the candidates are interviewed and refined and presented to the organization’s manager for final interview. It is true that the position is filled by RPO just like the traditional recruiter of the company or organization does, but the focus is made by RPO managers on the rate of turnover, frame of time as well as scalability for filling the required position (Claus Wehner, Giardini and Kabst, 2012 P-612). It doesn’t help only with filling the required position, but helps in improving the method of recruiting as well.

HR Predictive Analytics and its Role in Talent Acquisition

For a business to be successful, they need to have some great employees. By the word ‘Great’, we need to convey not just talented but those who are experienced enough and quailed to handle the job. The most important aspect is the ‘cultural fit’ which is a HR metric not easy to quantify or identify. This is how HR predictive analytics comes into play by the RPO consultants like OutMatch. They are using analytics to transform the face of recruitment deploying techniques like HR puzzle.

The outsourcing process of recruitment and selection function helps in saving cost and it approximately saves 40% of the organizational cost related to the process of recruitment. (Johnson, Wilding and Robson, 2014 P-323). With the help of outsourcing, organizations get the capability of improving quality as well as speed of entire process. The HR Professionals of a company are also able to focus on other important functions of HR as well as issues related to the strategies. According to Al-kassem (2017), the RPO does the entire process of screening and recruiting process, but the final decision remains in the hands of the Client Company or organization.

 This ultimately helps in saving time in the entire process of recruitment, as 70% of the time consuming process is done by the external agency (Landay and DeArmond, 2018 P-186). Outsourcing of Recruiting Process not only helps in finding excellent employees for the company, but they also focus on strengthening the hiring process which ultimately helps in finding employees which are top-notch for working with an organization.

The advantage of outsourcing the process of recruiting is not only limited up to cost saving and time saving, but it also helps in streamlining the entire process of recruitment as well as provides enough time for focusing on the development of business rather than management of employees (Siew-Chen and Vinayan, 2016 P-1026). One more advantage of RPO is that the traditional stages of recruitment including background checks have been gaining a helping hand through the use of analytics and metrics. Technologies in the field have made it easier than before to get the critical insights and data from real time historical databases.

However, contrary to the benefits provided, RPO also has some disadvantages or negative effects. According to Soelton (2018), the problems of recruitment can be observed in some cases as RPO doesn’t have the complete knowledge of organizational culture of an organization due to which employee’s performance can be directly affected which will affect the organizational success (Soelton, 2018 P-64). If the employee is not right for an organization, the company is the one that suffers. Outsourcing of recruitment process might result into too much dependency of an organization on an outsource provider as well as there are chances of losing control over functions of Human resource which ultimately affects the success of an organization (Johnson, Wilding and Robson, 2014 P-323).

It is important to know that employees of an organization are the major link and interface that help in maintaining the corporate brand with the help of their interactions as well as their behaviors. Hence, recruitment of talented and skilled employees for any organization is vital as they have the capability of enhancing the reputation of the organization as well as shaping of the corporate brand. The perception of brand is developed by employees of an organization in the thoughts and mind of customers through interactions (Landay and DeArmond, 2018, P-88). 

RPO and Corporate Brand

So, it is important for an organization to recruit right candidate in order to develop and maintain its corporate brand. Generally the HR professionals in an organization do not get enough time to source the candidates properly as they have to manage many other functions along with it and they have the pressure of filling the vacancy from the top management. This makes them do many mistakes and increase the turnover rate of the organization. They fill the position at the moment for the sake of continuing the work and showing their performance but this might hamper the reputation of the organization in the long run (Soelton, 2018 P-64).

The outsourcing of recruitment process has direct impact on corporate branding as it is important for an organization to have proper alignment of HR activities such as recruitment process in order to avoid conflicts. The three major elements which affect the internal branding of any organization are dependent on skills and talent of new recruited employee, turnover ratio as well as increment in productivity (Siew-Chen and Vinayan, 2016 P- 1028).

 On the other end, corporate branding of an organization can be negatively affected if an employee recruited through outsourcer is not efficient or not able to cope up with the culture of the organization due to insufficient knowledge and information about the organizational norms and environment. The corporate branding is mainly dependent on the performance of organization’s employees and their talent as well as capabilities (Soelton, 2018 P-64). Hence it is important for the organization to fulfill the position with the right employee at the right place which will help in retaining and providing the strong corporate brand.

Summary:

In this report, the review has been articulated to understand the effects of outsourcing the process of recruitment on corporate brand. In order to have a clear understanding of its effects firstly, the understanding of how the recruitment process can be outsourced has been discussed. Secondly, the focus is on the advantages and disadvantages of the recruitment process when outsourced as the part of the discussion (Landay and DeArmond, 2018 , P-88). Lastly, the relation as well as impact of the corporate brand and outsource of recruiting process has been analyzed. This report also confirms the role of HR predictive analytics and metrics in transforming the face of human resource function i.e. recruitment though some innovative use of technology for the benefit. It is surely going to change the terrain in the coming years.

References:

Al-Kassem, A. (2017). Recruitment and Selection Practices in Business Process Outsourcing Industry. Archives Of Business Research, 5(3), 40-56. doi: 10.14738/abr.53.2180

Claus Wehner, M., Giardini, A., & Kabst, R. (2012). Graduates' reactions to recruitment process outsourcing: A scenario-based study. Human Resource Management, 51(4), 601-623. doi: 10.1002/hrm.21490

Claus Wehner, M., Giardini, A., & Kabst, R. (2014). Recruitment Process Outsourcing and Applicant Reactions: When Does Image Make a Difference?. Human Resource Management, 54(6), 851-875. doi: 10.1002/hrm.21640

Gilani, H., & Jamshed, S. (2016). An exploratory study on the impact of recruitment process outsourcing on employer branding of an organisation. Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal, 9(3), 303-323. doi: 10.1108/so-08-2015-0020

Johnson, G., Wilding, P., & Robson, A. (2014). Can outsourcing recruitment deliver satisfaction? A hiring manager perspective. Personnel Review, 43(2), 303-326. doi: 10.1108/pr-12-2012-0212

Landay, K., & DeArmond, S. (2018). Recruitment Process Outsourcing and Recruiter and Hiring Firm Characteristics. Journal Of Personnel Psychology, 17(4), 183-192. doi: 10.1027/1866-5888/a000206

Siew-Chen, S., & Vinayan, G. (2016). Recruitment process outsourcing: a case study in Malaysia. Personnel Review, 45(5), 1029-1046. doi: 10.1108/pr-10-2012-0172

Soelton, M. (2018). Toward The Best Model In Recruitment Process And Employee Competence In Outsourcing Industries. Jurnal Ekonomi, 23(2), 64-90. doi: 10.24912/je.v23i2.371